Listen No. 6 - Sticky Fingers - The Rolling Stones
Genre: Rock
Context: Released by the band in 1971 on their new record label Rolling Stones Records.
Notable facts: Let’s talk about the zip on the cover. My copy has an actual real zip! Later versions only have a zip image. Warhol came up with the idea, and album designer Craig Braun executed the project. The zip caused a lot of problems. Sourcing wasn’t simple, as Braun explains -
“I went to the executive V.P. of Talon Zipper. I was trying to get the zippers for nothing, because they were going to cost like a nickel. So I say to the guy, “You’re going to be known everywhere around the world.” He said, “Why is that?” I said, “Because you’re going to give me four-and-a-half-inch zippers and they’re going to be on every Rolling Stones record.” And he said, “We’re already known.” So I said, “You’ll be known doubly, triply. It’ll be much bigger.” He said, “I don’t think you understand, sir, but our customers are not people who buy records. They’re the garment industry. And we already have all of that. So me, no, I’m not going to go for it.”
So we had to go everywhere in the world to find the zippers, but we eventually did: Cort zippers, a nickel less than Talon.”
Then, once produced, the zips damage the records when stacked, and shipped. It’s track 3 -Sister Morphine - on the second side of the record that suffers most. But Braun comes up with a solution -
“I got this idea that maybe, if the glue was dry enough, we could have the little old ladies at the end of the assembly line pull the zipper down far enough so that the round part would hit the center disc label. It worked, and it was even better to see the zipper pulled halfway down.”
Note: never underestimate the contribution of little old ladies, even if the culture does. Equal pay for work of equal value, and so on. You can read more here.
My favourite track: Wild Horses, but maybe also I Got The Blues or, quite possibly, Sister Morphine. Or is it Moonlight Mile?
What critics made of it: Q Magazine took a retrospective look back at this album and judged it to be "the Stones at their assured, showboating peak ... A magic formula of heavy soul, junkie blues and macho rock.’ David Hepworth helped me to understand something about this record. It has superb guest performers - Bobby Keys (tenor sax), Jim Dickinson (piano) and Billy Preston (organ), and it’s this, Hepworth argues, that gives the record its very wide musical range.
Listening to this inspired me to: think more about the humble zip - origins America, 1851 onwards.
Record Number 7: The Music Man by Meredith Wilson
Genre: Musical theatre
Context: A huge Broadway hit about a conman called Harold Hill who promises music lessons to unsuspecting Iowans, but has no musical training. He sells musical instruments, sets up a band, inspires a ladies’ drama troupe and generally brings good cheer to a previously dour town. But something interferes with his plan to run away with the proceeds of his scheme. He falls in love with the glamorous, perceptive librarian Marian (who has seen through him right from the start). Marian’s heart is won when she sees how Hill has helped her previously non-verbal little brother( Winthrop Paroo) to speak, and even sing.
Notable facts: Winner of five Tonys, including Best Musical (1957). A film version was released in 1962, and I watched the DVD as the plot made no sense to me at first. It’s an enjoyable film, and Robert Preston (from the original musical) is magnificent even though he wasn’t the director’s first choice. And a young Ronny Howard (of Happy Days fame) plays Winthrop Paroo with a spectacular lisp.
It took this record for me to realise that ‘Till There Was You’ was written by Meredith Wilson, and not the Beatles. And John Lennon didn’t know the song was from The Music Man when he first performed it. Anyway, the Beatles’ version made Wilson’s widow more money in royalties than from the show itself.
My favourite track: Marian the Librarian or Seventy-Six Trombones.
What critics made of it: Much applauded. Brooks Anderson of the New York Times wrote ‘If Mark Twain could have collaborated with Vachel Lindsay [founder of American singing poetry] they might have devised a rhythmic lark like The Music Man, which is as American as apple pie and a Fourth of July oration…’ But the 2022 revival of the show, starring Hugh Jackman, was judged dated and somehow not making enough of the central theme - con artistry.
Listening to this inspired me to: Well, I bought the DVD, and was very impressed by Robert Preston, who had a long film and stage career. I may try to find some of Preston’s early films - This Gun for Hire, 1942 is one I’d like to track down.
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